Some tourist attractions in Ta Phin commune have been repaired.

The Covid-19 pandemic has made the Cooperative unable to welcome tourists, many members lack financial resources for business capital turnover. In order to overcome difficulties, the members have turned their tourism business into agricultural production, creating the safe source of agricultural products for their families. The members together build the ecological garden model to improve the homestay landscape, clean the environment, ready to welcome back guests when the pandemic is under control.

Ta Phin Community Tourism Cooperative was established in September 2019, currently has 40 members and most of them are in homestay business, tourist guides, medicinal leaves bath business. Cooperatives are like the common house, connecting the members to share experiences and cooperate in developing services and tourism. Established for a while, when the Covid-19 pandemic broke out, the members together find new directions to adapt to the pandemic. Currently, more than 50% of the members have turned into agricultural production, some members have access to loans from GREAT Project.
In 2018, Mr. Ly Lao Ta (Sa Seng village) started to open a homestay combining with welcoming and guiding tourists to visit Sa Pa. Since his starting with tourism, every week he receives 4-5 groups of guests and the homestay with the capacity of 15 guests/day which is always crowded. Thanks to that, his family has the stable income with the main job from tourism. However, in 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic broke out, the homestay have had almost no visitors. Not surrendering to difficulties, he turned into agricultural production. Borrowing 30 million dong from the project "Promoting gender equality through improving economic efficiency in agricultural production and tourism development" (GREAT Project), he invested in planting 40 chayote trees, 25 passion fruit roots. Until now, chayote has started to harvest fruit, lemons have also grown well and have started to flower. Besides, he raised more than 200 chickens and took care of the family's orchid garden. He has promoted and introduced Dao ethnic bathing medicine leaves products on social networks, since then some customers still regularly place orders. 

Mr. Ly Lao Ta said: The epidemic caused a lot of difficulties, especially for those who work in tourism. I don't know when the pandemic will end and tourism will flourish again, so instead of waiting, I have turned my work into another way to earn income, and at the same time create jobs for myself and my family.

Ms. Ly San May (Group 2, Ta Chai village) has been in the tourism business for nearly 4 years. She opened a homestay, built Dao ethnic bathing room of medicine leaves and guided tourists to visit tourist attractions in the area. Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, all activities have been suspended, instead of waiting for the pandemic to pass, she has renovated her garden, planted short-term vegetables to serve the family's needs and sold them to the market. She has also experimented with herbal chickens and raised pigs to improve her income.

Until now, through the project's capital, the Cooperative has supported 13 households to borrow capital, each household borrowed from 5 million to 30 million dong. The above amount will be rotated after the period of time so that other members can also get access to the capital. Loans are used by the members to invest to develop animal husbandry, agricultural production, upgrading and repairing the homestays.

Ly San May, Director of Ta Phin Community Tourism Cooperative, said: Summer is also the season of tourism, but in fact Sapa tourism is "hibernation". Together, we turn difficulties into opportunities, simultaneously perform 2 tasks: preserving the cultural identity of the Red Dao ethnic group in Ta Phin, and at the same time finding new ways to earn income, waiting for the Covid-19 pandemic pass.